Quoting Pat Roche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> After an unsuccessful weekend struggle to get Red Hat 8 working properly,
I'd
> like to hear the views of this technically adept group on whether
> non-technical people
> should attempt Linux at all?
Yes! I think everyone should give Linux a test run. I'm sorry to hear that you
did not have any luck getting Red Hat 8 running, can you share your problems
with the group? Maybe we have the answers. I know there have been a number of
newbies who have had problems resizing NTFS partitions, but as I said in a
recent e-mail it may be best to just start from scratch so you can make the
partitions how you want, without resizing anything. Personally I don think
Linux is very hard to install. As they say practice makes perfect, and I have
installed many distros many times. There are always going to be problems
installing any OS but lucky for us there is lots of information and nice
people out there willing to help you get Linux onto your box. This list is a
good source of information, so is the web, newsgroups and irc.
> Should someone who doesn't have the technical aptitude to do his own
> troubleshooting avoid Linux until it becomes less problem-prone (e.g.,
> Jesse's recently posted
> headache with Mandrake 9.0?
I can't even tell you forsure that Mandrake is the problem. I just installed a
bunch of new hardware, so it likely that the hardware could be to blame as
well. Problems like this are not specific to Linux or Mandrake, you will
encounter them with Windows, MacOS, or any other system. The good news is that
Linux is more stable than many of those other OS's (and yes I mean Windows in
particular). Once Linux is installed it will for the most part work
flawlessly, unless you are messing around in your system and screw things up
;-). What I trying to say is that troubleshooting is not specifc to Linux, and
you don't need to be a rocket scientist to do it. Just try different things,
read the documentation, search google, post to the list. The more experience
you get troubleshooting any OS, they easier it will be in the future.
> If your answer is "go for it anyway," which distro would you recommend?
I like Mandrake, although I find 9.0 unstable compared to 8.2. I also like
RedHat, I think RH 8 is a nice distro. SuSE is quite nice, but be prepered to
spend money on the box as they don have iso's for download, I've also recently
been using Knoppix. It's real nice. You can test is out on the CD, and if you
like it there is a real simple script that will install it to the HD.
> And do you have a phone number I can call when I run into trouble?
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
#clug on irc.openprojects.net
1-800-sorryidontgivemynumberonthenet
;-)
Jesse
